Written on 24-25 of January, 2025
GFL2 is Girls' Frontline 2: Exilium, a gacha game with core gameplay similar to our beloved XCOMs from Firaxis. As name may suggest, there was GFL1 in the same series, and not so obvious Neural Cloud (I didn't play either of them).
In GFL2 you have characters which are called "dolls" (think of advanced humanoid robots) (humans are there in the universe, but aren't playable). To clear a stage you form a squad (usually 4-5 members) and send it on a mission, then standard XCOM gameplay kicks in. Between stages, there's regular gacha activity: farm, pull for new dolls and weapons (more on that later), farm different resources, increase affinity with dolls to boost their stats, etc. To add some variety, there are different event activities, which offer same general experience but replace (almost) linear stage progression with something more unique.
I joined the game on the second day after its release - I wasn't interested in in whatsoever so I didn't know pretty much anything before release, but then I saw a stream, and XCOM-style gameplay hooked me instantly.
Because of reasons, I am pure F2P player. So far, I was somewhat lucky and got all event dolls, and the only one I'm still missing is Peritya.
By the way, my UID is 409986, feel free to check out my Ullrid! But finish reading this essay first 😉
Now, to the review!
Turn-based combat. Square grid. 2 levels (ground + elevated). Tiles with additional effects.
But no hit chance RNG! However, crit RNG is present, but it feels less punishing / sad to not land a crit rather than miss completely.
Each doll has basic attack dealing 80% damage, 2 regular skills, ultimate skill (using it will trigger a special animation (can be disabled in settings) and a passive/talent. In addition to that, weapons also have passive effects, usually dealing more damage or increasing stats.
Dolls are nice and quite unique. You can tell them apart both by their appearance and by their skills. Dolls' appearance differs from office style -ish to AYAYA (I don't like the latter, but anyway). Dolls' activities in dormitories (a section of your base) somewhat reflect their personality.
I know that in GFL1 dolls were named exactly as their weapons, and many players are upset that in GFL2 they have different names (at least most of them do). I personally like the change (even though I didn't play GFL1): IMO, naming all characters after equipment they are using feels so wrong, almost as wrong as naming players after mouse models they are using: DeathAdder V3 Pro, M90, R.A.T. 6+, V8, Rival 5, etc. I'm G502 Hero, by the way.
Ullrid is one of 2 melee dolls available at the time of writing (the other is Krolik). Her Blade Whirlwind allows to attack up to 3 times in a single turn, with movement in between, which results in 3 dead enemies right at the beginning! Her ultimate is a dash, followed by attacking a single enemy with highest HP. Ult damage is nice on it's own, and it's further increased by consuming Hunter's Talent (you get 1 stack by dealing damage, can hold up to 3 max), and if 2 or 3 stacks are consumed - Ullrid gets Camouflage for 1 turn!
Many joke about "bringing sword to a gun fight", but they are not fully right at best, Ullrid is very fun and impactful doll, and I would recommend raising her if you managed to get her.
Oh yes, it is present, and sometimes is kind of a bit too much; I'd say that level of fanservice is somewhat reasonable? Some dolls (like Groza or Papasha) are just pretty, some (like Mosin-Nagant or Sabrina) are a bit sus animations or have physics . Anyway, most content is hidden behind paywalled skins or in dorms (especially with free camera), regular battle animations are much more restricted... but then there's running Sharkry.
Could be bigger like in Azur Lane, or could cover significant potion of the screen during the main gameplay like in NIKKE: Goddess of Victory.
Tsk, it's quite okay? Tsk, something dramatic, post-apocalyptic, cyberpunk-y. Tsk, I would like to tell more, but am lazy. Tsk.
Can't say that the story is award-worthy or even unique, I've had a lot of flashbacks, both to other games and different media. That being said, story references prior events (from GFL1, it seems) a lot, which felt like I started watching a movie from the middle - I understand what's happing right now, but next minute characters are talking about past event I have no clue about.
Main story is split into chapters. Unlike in some other games, chapters tend to end on such a cliffhanger, that it feels not like next episode of a show but rather very long ad breaks. Should be much better when reading all at once instead of as soon as new chapter is released...
Grab freebie from the shop (don't forget as there's no indication), do Platoon Patrol and maybe Gunsmoke as well if it's active (more on Platoon later), don't forget to spend 3 tickets for farming in the current event, don't forget to clear gold farm because it can be cleared only twice a day and you don't want to suddenly run out of gold with no way to quickly restore reserves, collect resources from dispatched squads and send them again, visit dorms, give 5 affinity things to anybody, clear standard farming stages, don't forget about PvP (maybe even both of them), LVL up dolls/weapons if you can or if you (commander) got LVL-up'd, collect commission rewards, collect voyage rewards.
Every.
Single.
Day.
As much as I like instant autos, there's so much of them basically required (sure, you can skip gold, but you won't be able to compensate via farming later, it's 2/day max)... Just the amount of menus to visit and buttons to click is exhausting. Why daily Voyage tasks are in their separate menu when one of them is literally "Complete daily commission tasks"?
GFL2 features double gacha: you pull for dolls and for their weapon. While every doll comes with a blue rarity weapon, purple one is much better, and gold one is almost incomparable. Too bad that gold weapons and dolls do not drop on the same banners, in fact limited doll banners won't give gold weapons, and weapon banners wont give dolls!
There also is standard banner, featuring both dolls and weapons from starting pool. Ah, right. Dolls and weapons from events are not added to standard or any other kind of permanently available. If you didn't get doll / gold weapon in time - sorry to be you, just wait until rerun (we have none so far, but it wasn't even 2 whole months after game release).
In any case, the most common outcome would be 90%+ of blue weapons, which are good for nothing except recycling. At least you get tickets for disassembling weapons, and you can spend those tickets on material from special section in the shop.
You get guaranteed purple or better item every 10 pulls, and 80 pulls are needed for guaranteed gold item. Not necessarily this item will be the featured one, it might be one from standard pool (50/50 chance)... at least the next one gold item will be featured one. But 160 pulls is A LOT, at least for F2P. I was lucky enough to get all featured event dolls and even couple of their gold weapons, but each of those successes was after 60+ spent pulls, so I was scraping bottom of the barrel each time. Not fun.
Thanks, game!
All weapons except handguns are farmed in double-stages, meaning you farm attachments for 2 types of weapons on thew same stage. For example, you can't farm attachments for sniper rifles specifically, it would be rifles and blades.
All weapons have several (4?) slots for attachments, and you can't choose what kind of attachments will drop.
Of course, there is a distribution of different rarities, so you get few (maybe) good attachments, and a whole pile of junk. At least that junk is used for attachment calibration (basically one-time enhancement)...
It's a pain.
Everything in the game is gated by commander level.
But there's something even worse: some content has its best option unlocked at funni level 60, which is also happen to be the limit. The game effectively wants you to reach max level ASAP, while placing roadblocks on every turn.
Apparently, you get 300 commander EXP from daily commissions + 288 from spending all Intelligence Puzzles you regenerate. At lvl 55, one level is ~1300 EXP, so you need about 2.5 days to level up commander.
There's no way the game gives enough EXP for dolls and guns to level up 2.5 teams (which you do need, because boss fight is double boss after lvl 45, plus Gunsmoke + Endless Projections (if it will ever rerun), and anything else that requires 2+ squads) every ~2.5 days, and there are also occasional limit breaks + helix nodes + increasing affinity + new dolls which you get at level 1 also consuming Puzzles. In fact, whole progression pacing goes out the window at about level 45-ish, when costs became noticeably limiting doll development, and at the same time double boss appears, requiring you to have whole 2 squads.
If you think that having more Puzzles a day would help - it's not the case. as the more you farm - the faster commander level grows, outpacing your attempts to keep dolls fully raised in terms of their and weapon levels. As an example, today I increased commander level from 57 to 59 (read through last chapter of main story) + spent the rest on EXP and gun EXP. Guess how many levels I was able to give to dolls? That's right - astounding total of 5 (2 to Ullrid and 3 to Groza) - and that's not even remotely enough to keep said 2.5 squads up-to-level. It is ridiculously disbalanced.
It's almost like the devs want to slow down your effective lvl progression in more than one way.
Dolls and weapons get enhanced if you manage to yoink duplicate copies (called "fortification" in this game). The annoying thing is that those duplicates often increase power level dramatically. For example, Suomi at F-6 cleanses not only Taunt, but also Fear, Infatuated, Stun.
How it affects PvP, which is played against dumb AIs? Well, in addition to overcoming just AI strats and atrocious-to-play-against dolls (Suomi + Makiatto combo is non-interactive as fuck), you need also to overcome thickness of the wallet. It still is doable, but I am not happy to be in significant disadvantage which I have no control over.
Events have hard/supply (they have somewhat inconsistent naming scheme) farm stages unlocked only after you clear event story stages. Seems logical at first, but! you can have only limited number of tickets at any time to clear those farm stages. You get 3 tickets per day and maximum capacity is 6, so you have at most 2 days (but more likely ~1.5 days, or even less) to clear the story and at least 1 farm stage, otherwise you start losing tickets. It is not a problem for active players, who tries to consume content as soon as it is available, but what if you can't? Maybe you have a busy week and come back late from work and are too tired to clear whatever the devs decided to release. Maybe you have medical conditions that make it difficult to meaningfully play a game for few days. Maybe you just play another, more important for you game, that just happened to release an event on the same date.
I totally understand why you would give players only a limited number of clear tickets each day, but why would you limit the total number, and not just limit but set the max value to just 2 days worth? It's not like players will get any (meaningful) advantage if they keep tickets for few days and then consume them all at once. Sure, players can level up few dolls by few levels in that time, but they could as well consume Access Key they didn't use before, or straight up just consume couple dozen of Collapse Pieces. I guess few players will get advantage of that small lvl difference from naturally gained resources, but everyone else will be neutral at best and frustrated at worst, because you just create QoL issue with no justification.
Yes, you can auto-clear story stages skipping story and then add 1 farm stage, just so you won't miss those tickets, but this approach also has issues (more on them below).
Okay, let's assume you played a stage while skipping story. Surely you can just read it later, right?
Wrong. To read the story again you must play the stage again, there is simply no option to just read the story. You WILL enter battle. And if you think you're smart and you will just exit the battle right away instead of playing it again - you're harming yourself because some stages have story bits after the battle. At least clearing the story stage again doesn't consume Puzzles, otherwise it would be even worse.
I guess devs didn't expect players would want to re-read the story?
You know what is worse than too hard stages because you unlock content based on your commander level and not on your actual doll level which always tails behind? When stages are way too easy because their target level is fixed way below your actual level.
I wouldn't've started use autos if story and even supply stages were even remotely interesting for my squad with dolls 20+ levels higher than enemies.
That feeling when you can't finish the stage in a single turn not because you need to think, strategize, advance carefully, but because enemies are too numerous and/or far apart...
On the other hand, Amidst Wings of Gray event (Daiyan one) has challenge levels starting at lvl50 and ending at lvl60! Are you serious?
It's almost funny (not in a slightest) to see how there are maybe 5-10 stages in the whole game which would be okay for your actual doll level, while everything else is either way above and frustrating or far below and trivial... But even when it's trivial, AI in the game is so sdumb that you still need to babysit it, otherwise it might fail stages with side objectives harder than "win in 6 turns". A shame!
Do you know how many new enemies were introduced during / for events (excluding bosses)?
And that's it.
Yes, that really is all. Every other event had the same enemies we seen in the main story or on one of main farming stages. And there are no new environment conditions whatsoever.
Oh, and the fact that those new enemies were present only during release event makes the whole picture even more sad: enemy variety and innovation (in events at least) decreased after release. Have you ever seen this before?
Just 2 tables:
Table 1: doll distribution by ammo type
| Ammo type | Doll count | Doll list |
|---|---|---|
| Light | 6 | Cheeta, Colphne, Ksenia, Nagant, Papasha, Suomi |
| Medium | 5 | Daiyan, Groza, Qiongjiu, Sharkry, Tololo |
| Heavy | 5 | Littara, Makiatto, Mosin-Nagant, Nemesis, Peritya |
| Shotgun | 3 | Lotta, Sabrina, Vepley |
| Melee | 2 | Krolik, Ullrid |
Table 2: doll distribution by phase (aka elemental damage) type
| Ammo type | Doll count | Doll list |
|---|---|---|
| Burn | 5 | Cheeta, Krolik, Ksenia, Sharkry, Qiongjiu |
| Electric | 0 | |
| Freeze | 3 | Lotta, Makiatto, Suomi |
| Corrosion | 3 | Nagant, Nemesis, Peritya |
| Hydro | 3 | Colphne, Sabrina, Tololo |
| Pure physical | 7 | Daiyan, Groza, Littara, Mosin-Nagant, Papasha, Ullrid, Vepley |
If you want to build elemental team - there's only 1 possible setup for freeze, corrosion, and hydro. And electosquad is literally impossible right now, the closest would be 0.5 doll in form of Mosin-Nagant (she's not even listed as electirc in filters, by the way, hence she's in the "Pure physical" row).
Regarding names in bold - those are dolls released during events or other non-main-game activities. Yes, it's been less than 2 months since the release, but why, WHY all new dolls are either Freeze, or pure physical? Where are electric ones? I wouldn't be as annoyed by lack of electrodolls if this phase type was only present in filters, but a lot of enemies are weak against electricity!
Holy Ancient Egyptian cat! Yes, I do understand that Japanese (which is default for voice) syllable structure is rather different from Russian, and that you can't just adjust your pronunciation to closely match native speakers. But uhh... could you at least try?
Why would you call Groza as Groza? Because it's how you would pronounce it in English without hints? Sure, as long as you're saying thunderstorm. English isn't known for it's perfect hint-less pronunciation in general and stressing syllables correctly in particular, and this time you lost 50/50.
Oh, and do you know how wrong is Mosin-Nagant's Voice 03? Not only "Огонь по готовность!" is not "All together" as it is translated in the game (translation from Russian would be "Fire when ready!" or "Fire at will!"), it also is grammatically incorrect because "готовность" (readiness) is in genitive case, which is "готовности" (so correct version should be "Огонь по готовности!") Yes, it may be not so obvious for non-native speakers (and voice actor clearly isn't a native speaker), but mistranslating? How could you mess up "All together!" with "Fire at will"? And it's not like they are even remotely similar in Russian, "All together!" would be "Все вместе!" Should've just used Google Translate or something, both for translation and for TTS.
I know that other languages (like Italian, Spanish, German, and so on) have similar issues and native speakers left irritated while everyone else doesn't notice anything wrong. And it is not something to be fond of.
Look! Attachments for SMGs are in the top row, and for blades are in the bottom row! Don't confuse them up!
Oh, and in case you're wondering - no, that white-red icon indicates attachment effect, and there's no restrictions on effect type an attachment for particular weapon might have.
(sorry for possible spoiler)
I can read, but it takes too much effort to feel comfortable. And if you think it's an exception - no, white text over very light custom background pictures is very common in the main story.
Platoon is local version of community/club/guild system. Members participate in guild activities, receiving special token (yet another currency...) which can be spent in platoon shop.
Platoon activities have a special quality to them: enemy level matches your commander level, so clearing them may or may not be auto-able, depending on how big difference between commander and dolls levels is (and we already established that it might be significant).
Daily Patrol is Platoon task which you should do, as its name suggests, daily. There are 2 (only 2!!) alternating stages, one with uhh... local wildlife, and another with different types of bois.
While somewhat forced, it's not that bad. Except it is. Clearing stage itself is fine, and another stage is also fine. What isn't fine is that you have only 2 stages, which you must clear every other day each, and you can't generally rely on automation. Over and over. Again and again. Yes, the same strat should work as fine as it worked 2 days ago, at least if level diff didn't become too big. Yes, it is boring and repetitive. No, there's no instant auto-clear, only in-battle auto-ing.
Gunsmoke is another daily Platoon activity, but unlike Patrols it's only available periodically. It lasts for 7 days, and each day there's a set of 4 team buffs (called Frontline Aids) to choose from, something like increased damage dealt by certain ammo type or dealing more damage when within 6 tiles of enemy, plus there is permanent buff active for the whole season - this time it was
Increased Hydro and Freeze damage and crit rate by 30%
But buffs are not all, there's a catch: you can use a doll only once a day (however, using support dolls from other platoon members is unlimited, so it partially bypasses the restriction). You get 2 tickets a day, and you can buy an extra ticket for 50 collapse pieces.
If your commander level is below 60, you can only fight against wild thorns, medic dudes and shield bois; enemy level is the same as commander level. The stage itself is rather nice: somewhat symmetrical but not exactly, a lot of possible doll deployment tiles allow for different strats (not sure if you would ever want to start attacking from all 4 spots, but you can). A big downside is that there's only one stage over and over again, so you'll see it a lot during Gunsmoke season. Anyway, here is a screenshot:
By killing enemies you score points, 800 is the maximum, although looks like you can get up to 1400, but only on lvl 60 boss Gunsmoke (I'm not that far into overall progression to say anything useful). Different enemies give different number of points, but you'd like to kill all of them anyway, right?
Gunsmoke is another daily Platoon activity, but unlike Patrols it's only available periodically. It lasts for 7 days, and each day there's a set of 4 team buffs (called Frontline Aids) to choose from, something like increased damage dealt by certain ammo type or dealing more damage when within 6 tiles of enemy, plus there is permanent buff active for the whole season - this time it was
Increased Hydro and Freeze damage and crit rate by 30%
But buffs are not all, there's a catch: you can use a doll only once a day (however, using support dolls from other platoon members is unlimited, so it partially bypasses the restriction). You get 2 tickets a day, and you can buy an extra ticket for 50 collapse pieces.
If your commander level is below 60, you can only fight against wild thorns, medic dudes and shield bois; enemy level is the same as commander level. The stage itself is rather nice: somewhat symmetrical but not exactly, a lot of possible doll deployment tiles allow for different strats (not sure if you would ever want to start attacking from all 4 spots, but you can). A big downside is that there's only one stage over and over again, so you'll see it a lot during Gunsmoke season. Anyway, here is a screenshot:
By killing enemies you score points, 800 is the maximum, although looks like you can get up to 1400, but only on lvl 60 boss Gunsmoke (I'm not that far into overall progression to say anything useful). Different enemies give different number of points, but you'd like to kill all of them anyway, right?
Oh, you think I copypasted Gunsmoke section by accident? Trust me, I didn't, I really described first and second seasons of Gunsmoke separately. Look closer, screenshots are different (notice dolls' levels)!
Why the description matches exactly? Simply because those 2 seasons of Gunsmoke were IDENTICAL, full bold Caps "identical". Literally no difference - same enemies, same only one stage, same placement, same rewards, same scoring system.
Why?
How?
Okay, let's assume first season had only one stage because it was a test of sorts, fine (not really fine as it doesn't require much thought to realize that clearing the same stage twice every day for a week is a bit too much, but whatever). Surely 2nd Gunsmoke would have more variety, right? Of course it doesn't. It really looks like they deployed/enabled 1st season again by mistake, it couldn't and shouldn't be so stupidly the same on purpose. Is it a honest mistake, deadline that wasn't met, malicious intent, or was it their planned plan all along? Are devs so incompetent that not only they made only a single map for activity you're expected to engage 2-3 times a day, but also repeated the same activity configuration in the second season? Didn't they know that just a tiny changes would make it less same-y? You know, change central part of the map, swap 2- and 6-tile spawns, swap places of bois with wildlife... or at least change seasonal buff, make it work for burn and corrosion instead of hydro and freeze!
They did nothing - and we got stupid lazy literal copypaste. They did nothing - and we got stupid lazy literal copypaste. They did nothing - and we got stupid lazy literal copypaste. They did nothing - and we got stupid lazy literal copypaste. They did nothing - and we got stupid lazy literal copypaste. They did nothing - and we got stupid lazy literal copypaste. They did nothing - and we got stupid lazy literal copypaste. They did nothing - and we got stupid lazy literal copypaste.
I'm so tired and bored of GFL2... Not the best feelings to have towards a game, right?
I do want to love it, but everything except core gameplay is ranging from "neutral-okay" to "stupid piece of dumb design". And even core gameplay itself is plagued by enemies of too low or too high levels, making the only good part of the game just sad.
I do like the story (at least main story, events are meh), but I'm definitely not staying for story alone.
Goodbye GFL2, you were fun until you became obnoxious.
As for you, dear reader... I'm afraid I should leave you as well, XCOM: Enemy Unknown finished downloading.
I'm still somewhat sad about dropping GFL2, especially since it was not a single giant issue but rather death by thousand cuts... and I think I do know what is the actual reason of why gameplay-related stuff is so unfun (after some time at least).
GFL2 is completely static. There is no randomness involved in the gameplay, aside from crits. Even that rogue-like-ish mode in Ullrid-Suomi event had all maps predefined, you could literally waste an attempt or two to just scout maps, screenshot them, and them have a perfect run. One of main reason why XCOM is famous and fun is not only for its "haha, missed 99% shot" but also procedural generation, both for stages (except very few story ones) and for more global missions.
Okay, maybe procedural generation for every or even for majority of stages would be too much. But those "most stages" are not meant to be replayed anyway, so nobody would care. But please, you have whole Platoon orbiting around daily repetition, and procedural generation there would be so much appreciated. Even something as simple as "we have 4 enemy groups and 4 enemy spawn location, let's just shuffle them" would be astronomically more enjoyable, especially if such random shuffling would happen not daily but for each individual attempt, so you can restart stage and get different starting conditions. Oh well.
Dixaba (THE), 2025